Is a north-facing garden really that bad?
It is the single most common objection at a house viewing, and it is half right. A north-facing garden does lose sun — but not as much as people think, not evenly across the plot, and not at the times of year that get quoted.
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What "north-facing" actually means
A garden is called north-facing when it lies on the north side of the house — so you walk out of the back door heading north. The house is then between the garden and the midday sun, which in the northern hemisphere always sits somewhere in the southern half of the sky.
The important consequence is not that the garden gets no sun. It is that the house casts a shadow into the garden rather than away from it. Everything follows from how long that shadow is, and that depends on two things: how tall the house is, and how high the sun climbs.
The one bit of arithmetic worth knowing. Shadow length = height ÷ tan(sun altitude). A 7 m house with the sun 60° up casts a 4 m shadow. The same house with the sun 15° up casts a 26 m shadow. Nothing else about a garden changes this much between June and December.
The numbers, for a typical plot
Take a two-storey house about 7 m to the ridge, in southern England, with a garden 10 m wide. Here is how far the house shadow reaches at midday, and roughly what fraction of a garden of each length is still in sun:
| Date | Noon sun | Shadow at noon | Sunny part of a 10 m garden | …of a 20 m garden |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 June | 62° | 3.7 m | 63% | 81% |
| 21 April | 50° | 5.8 m | 42% | 71% |
| 21 March | 38° | 9.0 m | 10% | 55% |
| 21 October | 28° | 13.3 m | none | 34% |
| 21 December | 15° | 26.0 m | none | none |
Noon figures for latitude 51.5°N. Morning and evening shadows are longer still, but they fall diagonally, which is what keeps the far corners usable.
Read the June row again, because it is the one that gets forgotten. On the longest day, a north-facing garden of ordinary size is nearly two-thirds in full midday sun. From May to August the sun rises well north of east and sets well north of west — at the solstice in London it rises at a bearing of 49° and sets at 311°. For the first and last few hours of those long days, the sun is shining onto the north side of the house directly.
Why depth matters more than aspect
Compare the two right-hand columns above. Doubling the garden's length does more for its sunlight than changing which way it faces would. A 20 m north-facing garden gets more usable sun across the year than a 8 m south-facing one hemmed in by neighbouring houses — and estate agents never mention that.
The practical version: the far end of a north-facing garden is the good end. It is the part that clears the house shadow first in spring and holds it longest in autumn. If you are planning a patio, a greenhouse or a vegetable bed, it goes at the bottom of the garden, not by the back door.
Summer is fine. Winter is the problem
The honest complaint about a north-facing garden is not about July. It is about the shoulder seasons and winter, when the sun is low enough that the house shadow swallows the whole plot. From roughly late October to mid-February at UK latitudes, a garden of average depth behind a two-storey house gets essentially no direct midday sun at all.
Whether that matters depends entirely on how you use the space. If the garden is somewhere you sit in June and look at in January, the loss is small. If you wanted a winter greenhouse, a sun-trap for morning coffee in March, or tomatoes ripening in September, it is a real cost.
What actually helps
- Use the boundaries, not the middle. The eastern and western edges of a north-facing garden catch low morning and evening sun that never reaches the centre. A seating area against the west fence gets evening light long after the middle of the lawn has gone into shade.
- Lower what you can. A 1.8 m fence on the south boundary of an already shaded garden costs you far more than the same fence would elsewhere. Dropping it to 1.2 m, or switching to a hedge you keep low, buys back several metres of sunlit ground in spring.
- Reflect rather than fight. A pale south-facing wall at the far end of the garden bounces a surprising amount of light back into the space. Dark fencing absorbs it.
- Plant for it. Shade is a growing condition, not a defect. Ferns, hostas, hydrangeas, Japanese maples and most woodland plants prefer exactly what a north-facing garden offers — even light without scorching midday sun.
- Check the neighbours before you buy. A north-facing garden with open ground to the south-east and south-west is a completely different proposition from one boxed in by other houses. The aspect is one input; the skyline is the other.
Check your own plot
Every number above is for a typical house at a typical latitude, which is to say it is probably wrong for yours. Your house height, garden length, boundary fences and the buildings next door all change the answer, and they interact — which is precisely the sort of thing that is easier to simulate than to reason about.
The garden tool lets you place your house, fences and trees to scale and produces a heat map of how many hours of direct sun each square metre gets, on any date you choose.